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U3 Flash Drives
I bought a new 1 GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro flash drive recently.
When I got to the store that had advertised the drive, they were nowhere to be found. When I asked about it, they had some "in the back." If the store had actually had the items on the shelf, I probably wouldn't have been surprised by the U3 Launcher that tried to install software when I inserted the flash drive into my computer.
I had just been reading back issues of Brian Livingston's Windows Secrets newsletter — where he had the exact same problem.
The Cruzer Micro was actually formatted internally into two "drives": one non-writeable "CDROM" drive (that's the icon that Windows showed for it) and one writeable flash drive. In other words, SanDisk had grabbed a chunk of my flash drive's memory, written auto-running software to it, and then made that portion of the drive non-writeable.
Brian's article "Beware some new U3 Flash drives" in the June 15, 2006, issue pointed me to the "U3 Launchpad Removal" web page at http://www.u3.com/uninstall/. Boy, they don't want me to remove it — I had three different screens to get to the download page, with multiple warnings that this was irreversible and that I was going to be missing the wonderful capabilities of U3. The first page didn't even mention that it was a download — it said "Continue the uninstall process."
Once I downloaded the software, I had to start it (step 4), then confirm I wanted to reformat the drive (step 5), then read and agree to their License Agreement (6) (I wonder why, because this was the first time I saw it, but the License Agreement said that I agreed to it by downloading it — NOT!), and one last chance to keep the Launchpad (step 7).
What was this software I wanted to eliminate? The U3 system was co-developed by SanDisk and someone else (I don't know who, but SanDisk says they co-developed it). By using U3-compliant programs on your flash drive you can carry your programs and data with your wherever you go and use them on any computer. Now, it never said that the U3 version of a program was compatible with the non-U3 version, either.
There were a few programs I recognized — there were U3 versions of Firefox (from a 3rd party, not from Mozilla.org), of OpenOffice and a bunch of other programs in various categories. However, Firefox and OpenOffice were the only two programs I saw that I use.
Further, I have no interest in keeping my data on my flash drive routinely nor in making sure that the data is correct and formatted correctly in multiple versions of a program. U3 was a waste of space as far as I was concerned.
Once I got past all the opportunities to change my mine, the U3 Launchpad Removal program quickly reformatted my flash drive and eliminated the "unwriteable" portion.
By the way, the SanDisk Cruzer Micro is a cool, tiny little flash drive. One feature that makes it so small is the USB 2.0 connector — it's retractable into the unit. The SanDisk Cruzer Micro like mine is available in 512MB, 1Gb, 2GB and 4GB sizes.
Since I originally wrote this article, many more programs have become available for U3. Of course, many others can be run from a flash drive without U3, but U3 offers a Start-button-like menu structure for easy program access.
Am I going to reinstall the U3 system on my flash drive. No, and it's probably not possible (or, at least, that's what the U3 site said). Am I going to buy another flash drive to get U3? No, I don't plan to do that, either.
Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!
<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/u3-flash-drives.php">U3 Software for Flash Drives</a>
Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.
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